Category Archives: Exhibitions

Sebastião Salgado’s penguins (and other social animals)

Posted on by
Reply

I am in Sweden for a week. I go to see an exhibition by the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. Question: do I really want to see more images of penguins in cold sea and ice landscapes? Answer: Yes! If they are photographs taken by Sebastião Salgado. I stroll into the Swedish Museum of Photography. My jaw drops. I am simply stunned by the images. This is a masterclass in composition, story telling and developing. “Award-winning” is an inadequate description.

Salgado 1

Saunders Island is inhabited by penguins of several different species, notably the chinstrap (Pygoscelis antarctica), which number over 150,000 couples. South Sandwich Islands. 2009.

I take photos of the photos. My camera feels cold. My fingers feel cold. I shiver. How is it possible that these beautiful images take me to the most inhospitable part of the world, focus on a cute fluffy swimming flightless bird and yet somehow what arrives in my mind’s eye is the environmental cost of human over-population?

Salgado 2

Zavodovski Island is home to some 750,000 couples of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) as well as a large colony of macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus). The island’s active volcano is visible in the background. South Sandwich Islands. 2009.

Salgado 3

A colony of chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) at Bailey Head on Deception Island. Antarctic Peninsula. 2005.

Back home, I take a look at Sebastião’s website. I have an insight to the work of a truly great photographer but also a photographer whose mission involves putting his work to work. These extraordinary penguin images are part of “Genesis” started in 2004; it is a bigger project about a pristine natural world and invites consideration of human’s interaction with it.

Salgado 4

Chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarctica) on an iceberg located between Zavodovski and Visokoi islands. South Sandwich Islands. 2009.

Sebastião’s concerns – and his projects – go further than the environment, his images tell of the dispossessed and injustices in all corners of the globe. They punch. Hence his photo essays carry titles such as “Coffee,” “Migration,” “Polio,” and “Workers.” He also runs a “Smiling Children Project” via his Facebook page. Too sugary? Maybe. But with this morning’s news screaming the awfulness of Iraq, Gaza, Ukraine and Syria, I’m happy to be reminded of a common attribute that binds us social animals together rather than the all too common brutality that pulls us apart. Question: Can images alone bring about change in the world? Answer: Yes! If they are photographs taken by Sebastião Salgado.

Robert Ramser’s Holy Creatures

Posted on by
Reply

Calmly sipping a cup of Darjeeling tea, Robert Ramser told me his advice to any aspiring photographer. “Stay with your own style. It is better to take a bad photograph in your own style than a good photograph in someone else’s style.” In his series “Holy Creatures” – the subject of his up-coming exhibition – he certainly stays with his own style. But you will not find a bad photograph. They are all developed by hand from medium-format film. They are beautiful.

Ramser 10

The Philosopher, Vrindavan 2008

Last year, I met Robert at his home. I wrote about his mesmerising Asian photography. He told me that, on one of his photographic journeys to Mumbai, India, he became fascinated by the spiritual presence of animals. He had taken refuge from the heat in a small museum and discovered a series of miniature paintings illustrating the ancient Panchatantra fables from the Mogul era. He explained “In Hindu, Jain and Buddhist philosophies, every living thing is a soul incarnated in a material body. I was inspired by the exquisite manner these artists showed the presence and the dignity of the animals…”

Ramser 11

The Widow, Vrindavan 2008

Robert’s images are delicate and enduring. They have captured the animals’ indifference to humanity. I am sure that if I look for long enough, souls will appear! And there is atmosphere. I feel heat and humidity. I smell dust and open drains.

Ramser 12

The Lights of Paradise, Varanasi 2013

Ramser 13

The Capuchin in the Alcove, Vrindavan 2008

A hallmark of Robert’s Asian photography is that it is difficult to imagine the presence of a photographer in the scene. However, at 6.00pm on 5th June, Robert will definitely be present at the opening of “Holy Creatures” at the prestigious photo gallery Fotografika at 10, rue Borgeaud in Gland (between Geneva and Lausanne.) The exhibition lasts until 26th July. Go!

Humanitarium

Posted on by
3

My bicycle route to work takes me past Broken Chair in place des Nations. I grind my way up avenue de la Paix. On my left is the Russian Permanent Mission and then the International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent. I look up at the former Geneva Carlton Hotel – now the head quarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The next building on the left of Peace Avenue is the Permanent Mission of the United States. On my right all the way is the United Nations.

Humanitarium 1

For three years, the hill which houses the Museum and upon which sits the ICRC is a massive construction site. Now the cranes are gone. The rubble is grassed over. The ICRC’s new visitor centre is a design master stroke. Two enormous, tiered, horizontal glass facades are set into the hill. I hear later that a stipulation handed down to the designers, Group 8, is that the new structure should not compete visually with the grandeur of the ex-Carlton. But, just as the sun rises over the distant alps on a crisp March morning, it does compete and beautifully so. It strikes a bold contrast of old and new: traditional stone, plaster, tiles and shutters versus modern, minimal, doorless glass.

Above the Museum there is the new centre’s restaurant. It too has stunning design features.

Humanitarium 2

A huge circular opening in the roof overhang accommodates a mature cedar tree: an ingenious juxtaposition of cement, glass and nature.

Humanitarium 3

Looking for more, I enter the restaurant. I am the first of the day’s customers for coffee. Mont Blanc stands tall in the distance. I like this place.

Humanitarium 4

An elegant, sleek, clean, curvy and cool guggenstairwell takes me into the heart of this ambitious project housing a new conference facility – the Humanitarium – and a refurbished Museum. The name of the first invites a look at what happens in the second.

Humanitarium 5

Red Cross people tend to favour rather sober surroundings for their deliberations. But, the atmosphere of the high-tech Humanitarium is mood-lightening. This is due, in part, to faux-clouds cleverly created by the shapes of and lighting between vertical ceiling panels. Bravo, Group 8!

Humanitarium 6

I meet the Director of the Museum, Roger Mayou. What does the reconstruction mean for his domain? He explains it brings additional space especially for temporary exhibitions. I ask him what aspects of the whole project he is most pleased with. He bristles with pride – and rightly so – inviting me to take a tour.  I am to discover that the spirit of innovative design that catches my eye from outside bores deep into the permanent exhibitions of the Museum.

The “humanitarian adventure” is a stunning ensemble of three contrasting visual concepts each interactive and each the brainchild of a different architect: “Defending human dignity”  – Bravo, Gringo Cardia!, “Restoring family links” – Bravo, Diébédo Francis Kéré! and “Reducing natural risks” – Bravo, Shigeru Ban! The exhibitions are joined by the common thread of witnesses. Each witness is a life-size touch-screen image; to hear his or her story I press my fingers against an outstretched hand.

Humanitarium 7

The message tree, Architect: Diébédo Francis Kéré, Photo credit: MICR Alain Germond

One theme bowls me over. “Restoring family links” is poignant in the extreme. I push through a dense curtain of limb-entangling chains. The links slide coldly over the back of my hand: the hand that will, in a few minutes, initiate contact with witnesses who have lost links to family through conflict. This is a design feature that is brilliant and engaging; it is a little unsettling. In my experience, touch is a sense rarely stimulated in museums.

The first display I encounter in this theme is the mind-numbing collection of 6 million registration cards of the International Prisoners of War Agency established by the ICRC in 1914 shortly after the outbreak of World War I. There is a desk where I can carry out my own search for an individual prisoner. My second encounter is with the “message tree.” Its branches  are hung with Red Cross messages: sometimes the only means of contact between detained people and their loved ones. Powerful! Visit this Museum!

This week, the United States threatens Russia over military forces and flags in Crimea. The stuff of war! Diplomats in their black limousines, shuttling heatedly up and down avenue de la Paix between the respective Permanent Missions, must pass right in front of the Humanitarium and the Museum. I hope they too notice the glass facades and stop to see what is behind them.